Life Is Strange: episodic video games prove as addictive as episodic TV

Games structured like prestige TV shows present unique difficulties – having to essentially build different games – but also unique opportunities: ‘It’s really cool to be able to react to what your community likes about it as you’re making it’

Dontnod Entertainment, makers of Life Is Strange, were told that a game with a female protagonist ‘would not sell’.
Photograph: PR

That was the refrain most often fielded by Oskar Guilbert, CEO of Dontnod Entertainment, when he pitched Life Is Strange to major publishers.

Of course he suspected the idea wouldn’t be fashionable. Musclebound warriors, red-blooded swashbucklers, strapping rogues: these are the customary heroes of the medium. Life Is Strange, meanwhile, is about a thoughtful, soft-spoken teenage girl who’s interested in folk music and photography, and happens to have the power to rewind time.

After shopping the concept around a while, Dontnod at last found the support of Square Enix, the Japanese publisher best known for producing role-playing games like Final Fantasy. “Everyone else just said no, it will never work,” Guilbert says. Dontnod didn’t care, however, and they wouldn’t compromise the integrity of their original vision. “We fought against a lot of preconceptions in this industry.”

In another important respect, however, Life Is Strange is quite on-trend: it’s being released episodically, every six weeks, in two- to three-hour instalments. The premiere episode arrived on 30 January; episode two followed at the end of March, and the next is set for May.

Life Is Strange: ‘We fought against a lot of preconceptions in this industry.’ Photograph: PR

Dividing a title into chapters and publishing them in succession has become something of a phenomenon in the gaming industry in recent years. It started as a low-risk alternative to the usual blockbuster release strategy – and of late has begun to yield many games that, like Life Is Strange, might never have been green-lit under the traditional system.

Simon Parkin, a freelance writer on games for the New Yorker magazine, believes the popularity of the episodic approach has been “facilitated by the rise of digital distribution methods”, which have made it “much easier and cheaper to release any number of titles”. Instead of pressing and shipping costly discs to brick-and-mortar stores, publishers can now upload a title to online marketplaces like Steam and Sony’s Playstation Store, where players can download them instantly.

That ease of digital access has all but revolutionized the dissemination of games.

The first big episodic hit was The Walking Dead, an acclaimed five-part mystery-adventure title by Telltale Games. Its success proved the viability of the format to even the most skeptical publishers. But it also proved something about artistic possibilities: episodic games, people now apprehended, could be like episodic TV.

“The way in which an episodic game is structured,” Parkin observes, “is very similar to prestige, premium TV.”

As was the intention. Dave Grossman was the lead writer and designer on The Walking Dead, and a pioneer of the episodic format. He and the Telltale team, he reflects, aspired “to make games episodically and release them digitally when neither of those things were being done”. It seemed an ideal time: “The music business had paved the way for us by persuading people to buy things digitally. Game companies weren’t really doing that yet but we figured we could have a stab at it.”

So Grossman and his team looked to TV for strategies – “have a writers’ room, swap off who’s taking the lead on each episode, but have everyone is in the creative meetings”.

The Dontnod team was inspired by specific shows like Twin Peaks and Veronica Mars, they say, but also by the approach of a network like HBO. “We are in the golden age of TV,” says Michel Koch, one of the co-directors of Life Is Strange. “We have fewer shows where each episode is different and more where it takes five to 12 episodes to tell one whole story. We saw that it could be really interesting to use this method of story-telling in a game.”

The Dontnod team was inspired by shows like Twin Peaks and Veronica Mars in making Life Is Strange. Photograph: PR

The episodic format also afforded Dontnod the freedom to tell a story at their preferred pace: slow.

Indeed, one of the most delightful things about Life Is Strange is its indulgence in repose – in the moments of reflection and meditation most games skip over entirely. “Here the player can sit by a fountain and just listen to music and look around,” Koch says. “We knew that the episodic format would let us give something more to the player who wants to take their time.”

Dontnod, alas, don’t have the same luxury: one of the problems with the episodic format is that it puts tremendous strain on the developers to release the next instalment of their game quickly. Raoul Barbet, the other co-director of Life Is Strange, concedes that the format brings a lot of difficulties. “It’s like making five different games. We have five voice recording sessions, five motion capture sessions, five submissions to the publisher. Everything is done five times.”

What makes the effort worthwhile is the affection shown toward the game by its fans.

“After episode one was released,” Barbet remembers, “we saw people beginning to really love this game. They’ve given us the strength to continue.” And as the fans await the next episode, sharing their hope of what’s to come online, Koch says the team is paying attention: “We spend a lot of time reading forums and listening to players. We saw that some characters were loved more than we expected, so we decided in a later episode to give that character a larger role. It’s really cool to be able to react to what your community likes about your game as you’re making it.”

“Players,” Guilbert concludes, “are looking for something new. They’re tired of playing the same kind of games all the time. What we want to bring them is something different, something slower, more poetic, more nostalgic – something which isn’t so present on the market.”

The gamble is paying off. At a gaming expo recently, Guilbert ran into some of the publishers who passed on Life Is Strange – the publishers who couldn’t abide a game about a girl. “They congratulated us on our success and said they hope it changes the industry.” Perhaps it already has.